LiveDocuments using Flex and AIR for a real office suite

Live Documents (ZDNet gallery) made a big splash when it first came out. The user interface is very similar to Office 2007 and a lot of the functionality from Office is there as well but the whole suite was created using Flex 2 so it can be accessed in the browser. Live Documents did a very good job of creating a pretty exceptional rich Internet application and getting peoples attention by creating a powerful user experience. I finally got my account this week and I've been able to test it out. While there are a few bugs, this is a great application and one of the better examples of Flex out there that I've seen.

Live Documents has all the features that should be in an office suite. You can create spreadsheets, text documents and power point presentations. There is also an element of collaboration so that you can share documents with other people and set permission levels. They've also built up some general productivity features including tasks, contacts, reports, and requests that add to the collaborative feel. The word processor isn't quite as polished as Buzzword (for instance there is no spell checker), but because the scope is bigger that's to be expected. The spreadsheet is probably the most impressive application out of the three. It handles most general formulas and feels exactly like Microsoft Excel. For a browser-based application it is an impressive feat.

Because the company is using Flex they were able to easily create an AIR application and I was able to test out the powerpoint competitor in AIR, WebPPT. The AIR version really completes the story for Live Documents. They built in the ability to save and open documents using AIR (though PowerPoint didn't open the saved documents correctly). The only major feature request that I had was that the AIR applications tie back to my account on the server. At this time they don't seem to but I was told that the AIR implementation is in the very early stages.

I talked to Sumanth Raghavendra, the CEO of Live Documents about how close to Office 2007 the user interface was. He had what I thought was a good response:

Regarding the UI, the Office 2007 UI is just a starting point - as we build out our applications and outfit it with new functionality that the reference desktop applications does not have, the UI will change considerably along all fronts - the idea of retaining the same UI in this release is to minimize the learning curve for our early users and to give them a user experience that is as close to their current desktop experience as possible...we might also, change the actual UI prior to our final release (as you might know, this is just a tech preview and the final application might look considerably different).

It's a very interesting strategy. The current user interface gets them instant recognition and makes it easy for users to jump into the application but it sounds like this may not be permanent. They have most of the actual functionality there so changing the user interface wouldn't be difficult and the end user wouldn't lose much. For those worried about Live Documents' future when it comes to patents, I think they're safe. Not only that, but they're going to be a major player in the online office world. I've got some screenshots from the Flex and AIR application available.